Project 52, Isolation

I’ve been absent! I guess that’s what happens when you take a plunge off a 16 hand thoroughbred horse. Thanks to a concussion, I’ve not been updating my blog but it’s still been busy! I have a double blog post to share:

One is some photos I worked on this week in keeping with the Project 52 Blog circle assignment, called Isolation.

The other selection of photos is from my cat portfolio work I did in February. These were my first kitty sessions and they went incredibly well!

ISOLATION

I really appreciate how well timed this weeks Project 52 assignment is. Just last week, I had been going over my images and wanted to do more adjustments with my apertures for variety. I almost always choose f1.8 aperture on my camera because my 85mm lens is typically on and that width gives great bokeh (background blur) at appropriate distances. Yet, when I swap to the 5o mm, I feel like details can often get lost at f1.8.

In laymen’s terms, aperture decides how much detail is included in a final image. For some odd reason, the powers that be decided that a “small” aperture number should be called “wide open” because it allows the most light into the camera. Yes, that twisted my head around for a bit. My brain doesn’t think that way! Shooting at the “widest” aperture gives images that desirable background blur with the subject sharply in focus. The bigger the aperture number (say, f8) means that the camera is restricting light, becoming “narrow”. The more narrow the aperture, the more details the camera captures. Landscape photography is a good use of “narrow” aperture as it gets an entire mountain scene in focus.

To be entirely honest, I was having a day like none other when I worked on this assignment. I’ve yet to encounter a difficult client session and my own dogs are competition trained. This time around, Mr. Balan gave me nothing but trouble. I chalk it up to senior-itis and forgave him. However, none of the images are worth writing home about. I decided to edit them all in black and white for better contrast/comparison. When I got to f16, Mr. Balan decided his extensive “stay” training was lost in the past, and, moved. Thus, the different pose. But, you can still see how more of the background bushes are in focus than the wider apertures…

I still LOVE f1.8 but I think that the f 3.5 looked pretty good, too!

FEBRUARY KITTIES

My very best friend of 24 years has 4 beloved cats. One of whom is not doing well; dealing with diabetes, pancreatitis, and kidney disease. His name is Tobey. I was determined to make the drive to her place and get some great photos of Tobey before it was too late. Her kitty crew became my first stop on February’s cat portfolio building sessions.

Here is the gang, left to right…Tobey, Mikey, Lucky, and Kenshi.

My second kitty portfolio session took me back into town, to the home of a prior interior design coworker of mine. She owns two gorgeous cats, Channel & Mae. Channel is a lovely cream color and Mae is black/white.

While I have never owned a cat in my life (being a crazy dog training lady), I was captivated by these sessions. I truly enjoyed it and I hope to have many more feline sessions in the future!

I encourage you to continue through the blog circle and enjoy more photos! Next up is Jodie Pholi Images.